Timor-Leste’s resistance hero says Australia can make amends for “exploiting” its smaller neighbour by backing a long sought-after pipeline to the country’s south coast.
Timorese resistance hero and the country’s first president, Xanana Gusmao, has sent a blunt message to Australia: give it a chance to further develop its own gas industry and let the underdeveloped nation flourish.
However, Gusmao has long maintained the plant must be built on Timor-Leste’s southern coastal area of Suai and,, said Canberra’s support would help settle historical grievances over both Australia’s approach to Indonesia’s takeover and its maritime boundary with Timor-Leste. While the sea border dispute was eventually resolved in 2018, relations were also rocked by a spying scandal after the Australian Secret Intelligence Service bugged Timor-Leste ministerial offices in 2004 in a clandestine bid to gain an advantage in negotiations over resources in the Timor Sea.
“We feel that it is time. I don’t know about Woodside because Woodside is not the government. But the government, I believe that they [will] come to the right [decision] and understand that they have to give us the right to develop ourselves.” “We cannot get involved in global strategy, geopolitics. We are a very small country. I told it to the Chinese ambassador here in this room, and to the American ambassador. [I said] ‘Please, we need peace and stability to face a lot of [the] problems of our people’.”Alkatiri, 73, said he also wanted to see gas from Greater Sunrise piped to Timor-Leste if economically feasible.
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